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CSR Falls Back Despite a Strong Second Quarter

Last week's major deal may have spiked today's good news.

CSR(LSE: CSR.L) -- a leading provider of semiconductor technology -- was down almost 3% this morning, despite strong second-quarter and half-year results. That's probably because a lot of good news was priced in from last week's announcement of a deal with Samsung, when shares shot up nearly 40%.

Still, there's a lot shareholders can be pleased with. Second-quarter revenue was up more than 37%, at $266.5 million (Q2 2011: $193.9 million), with strong year-on-year growth in its Automotive business line, up 40%, and in its home business group, up 33.7%. The underlying gross margin for the second quarter increased by 2.2%, from 49.8% in 2011 to 52.0% this year. Operating profit remained comparable to Q2 2011.

CEO Joep van Beurden said:

We had another good quarter driven by our momentum in providing higher-margin platforms, which is reflected in our revenues and underlying gross margins.

In line with much of the sector, while we saw strong trading conditions during the first half of the year, order patterns have been more cautious with respect to the second half of 2012. Nevertheless, we currently expect revenue for the full year to be broadly in line with market consensus revenue expectations.

However, whether CSR's current performance is good or not rather depends on how far back you look -- while its shares have now almost doubled since a low of 153 pence in December 2011, they remain a long way off 2006's high of 1,523 pence.

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